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Friday, April 10, 2020

An Unequal Society vs the Coronavirus pandemic

For the first time in-I don't know how many-centuries, we have the ability to save the world of a pandemic by staying home. Of course, those of us who are able to say home in these Coronavirus times should consider ourselves lucky (at least to some extent, I won't talk about how this is affecting my line of work here, I'll reserve that for a different post), but tons of people (especially marginalised parts of society) won't be able to stay home because they live on a day-by-day basis; some small businesses are on the verge of collapsing and, with no near end in sight, I feel like most of us will see a drastically different reality by the time it's considered prudent to leave our houses.

Our society works under the basis of capitalism, if we add the idea of a virus spreading, poor healthcare conditions and the already present inequality in it, the results are a little terrifying. Basically we'll be stuck with a system in which the richer will have access to the best medical resources and the working class and underprivileged fellows will suffer even more than they already do because, not only will they be sick, they'll also be unable to put food on the table. I've read somewhere that a situation like this serves as "an equalizer" because it affects every step of the hierarchy EQUALLY, without discriminating between rich and poor and it's true (in that little extent) but it's also false. The virus will not care about how much money you have in the bank but it definitely won't put everybody on the same boat. NOT A CHANCE.

The virus will impact heavily in politics, economics and healthcare, that's a given. In a country and society where class stratification plays a huge role in daily life, the consequences will worsen and the scariest part is that it's already happening: between people who don't really believe in the virus (upper and lower class tiers) and keep on going out, increasing the contagious rate; people who blame it all on the president (because we all need someone to blame, right?); casual racists and; unfair company owners... Things are looking pretty bleak at the moment.

If this virus acted like an equaliser, people wouldn't be forced to go to work, to crowd subway stations... We're about to see a harsher division between classes and if we stop fighting, it'll be impossible to change the current situation. So, next time you think about leaving your home for a non-life threatening situation, don't only think about sick people (although I'm sure irresponsible people don't event think about that), consider the impact you're generating in society and the contribution you're making to an awful new normality that will only divide classes even further.